Barak Ben-Shem, at The Blogs

Barak Ben-Shem

Mar 26, 2015, 9:56 PM

During the discussions about whether or not Obama should make a deal with Iran - and what kind of deal that should be - one important element gets left unsaid: the treatment of religious minorities in Iran. Most people...

Mar 28, 2014, 8:08 PM

How an Eruv near London proves (to some people) that Jews run the world…

The small town of Bushey, near London, in a bucolic and prosperous part of England, is, by all accounts, a special place, and not particularly anti-semitic: in fact, about 11% of the town is Jewish, and it has a...

Mar 20, 2014, 8:40 PM

In a shtreimel or tattooed, we are brothers

Watching the widening gap between secular and religious Jewish Israelis is heartbreaking. Both sides have their own valid arguments: secular Jews often sneer at and undervalue the contribution of religious Jews to keeping Israeli society something other than the...

Mar 17, 2014, 6:41 PM

An evening with Dieudonne

Last night I, while on a trip to Paris, I entered the pit of the enemy – the small theatre, located in a mixed Mizrachi and North African Muslim neighbourhood, where Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, lately infamous in the Jewish...

About Me

Barak Ben-Shem is a Jewish "Israeli-American" (Born in the US to Israeli parents.) He has run an investment fund for the last ten years and before that ran a private equity fund in Romania. He is a PhD candidate at Columbia University, studying sociology.